Computer monitoring is a wide field that may encompass any type of status reporting, alerting, or other management tools that may help maintain production computer systems. Computer monitoring may include hardware status and performance, network monitoring, software performance analysis, and many other components.
Conventional monitoring systems may evaluate real time or near-real time data and compare those data against thresholds, limits, or other metrics to determine whether an error or alert condition may exist. When an alert is triggered, some communication may be made to a human administrator who may take corrective action. Such systems tend to be reactive and able to detect when a problem has already occurred.